It's a bit annoying that, with an active player base less than 5, so much desirable equipment is maxxed out. I have some suggestions as how to address this issue:

1. Simply remove all maxes on eq. Downside: Removes a lot of the challenge of the game, promotes homogeneity among PCs.

2. Even if eq is supposed to be maxxed, provide some small % of having it load anyway. Downside: Basically the same as for #1 except PC would have to perform more "locates" than normal. One way to enhance this is to have a maxxed item only pop upon the death of the mob. So if I *really* want a Staff of Thunder & Lightning, I'll have to actually kill the Deranged Druid many times in hopes of it popping. Not sure how hard this would be to implement though.

3. Have the most desirable maxxed equipment randomly load on other mobs of similar or harder difficulty in other zones. This would also promote the visiting of zones that are often ignored. For example, with maxxed Cloud Armbands no longer loading on Cloud Dragon in Dloft, they might still sometimes pop up on, say, a Cloud Giant in Cloud Castle, or on Brandon Human in Darkspyre. As if, the new mob that has the item actually went out and got it from the original mob. Downside: Probably hard to implement in code; the item will still be damned hard to find for PCs (but at least there's a chance).

4. Put a time limit on the ownership of a maxxed item. So if you possess a maxxed item, it will simply disappear after, say, 60 RL days, whether you are active or not. That way, no one could hoard eq by logging on every 60 days, everyone would have to at least go out and retrieve their eq now and then, and everyone would at least have a chance to grab an item every now and then. It would also encourage players to learn how to get their own eq. Maybe adjust the length of ownership by rarity level and whether it was modified via quest points. Again though, I don't know how hard this would be to implement.

5. Similar to #4, create some kind of activity factor score based on frequency logged on, # of kills made, # of rooms visited, and/or # of zones visited over some period of time and if a PC doesn't meet some minimum activity level his maxxed items disappear. To make it easier, this can be checked upon a PC's logon, since if they don't log on at all within a 60 day period, all their eq is lost anyway.

6. Allow PCs to use quest points to buy a maxxed item. This has similar drawbacks to #1 & #2 but if the qp cost is scaled to rarity, etc. the impacts could be limited. But yet again, not sure how this would be implemented.